State Sen. Anthony Bouchard, R-Cheyenne, this week described the vote of U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney to impeach former President Donald Trump as a “stab in the back.”
Bouchard’s comments came during an appearance on Fox with Laura Ingraham, his first televised appearance since announcing his campaign against Cheney in 2022 for her House seat, which she has held since 2017.
When Ingraham asked Bouchard why it was a problem for Cheney to vote her conscience to impeach Trump, Bouchard said it wasn’t her job to vote on her feelings.
“She’s there to vote for the people of Wyoming,” he said. “We’ve had a full-on attack on conservatives, it’s gone on and on and on. We had a man that was president that was fighting for us, and what he got was an ice pick in the back by 10 people.”
Cheney on Jan. 13 was one of 10 House Republicans to vote in favor of impeachment following an assault on the U.S. Capitol she believed Trump helped to incite.
Bouchard said he expected this kind of behavior from the “swamp” in Washington, D.C., but not from a representative from Wyoming.
“That’s why I’m running, I think we have to make a good fight against what’s going on,” he said. “If we have someone from Wyoming just going to Washington to make deals, what good is that going to do?”
Ingraham said she wished Cheney and other legislators like U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah were as tough on congressional Democrats as they were on Trump.
Conservative columnist Henry Olsen on Thursday said the Democratic Party is looking forward to intra-party battles like this.
“They know that the more Republicans fight each other, the likelier they won’t reunite to fight them,” Olsen said. “Democrats are surely drooling over the rumored prospect of Trump creating his own Patriot Party that would position itself to the GOP’s right on rhetoric and policy.
“In our first-past-the-post election system, in which a candidate does not need a majority of the vote to win, Democrats know that a split center-right can only help them,” he said.
Meanwhile, Bouchard announced on his social media accounts Friday that he had raised more than $50,000 in donations within the first two days of announcing his congressional campaign.
